When Carlos Juarez was growing up in Puebla, Mexico, his father would stay out late on Saturday nights, blowing off steam by drinking and playing soccer with friends.
Come Sunday morning, if he was hung over, his wife, Juarez’s mother, would boil a whole chicken — one of the hens from their yard — into a soup with jalapenos, onions and a thick bouquet of cilantro. The whole family would eat the soup that day, relishing in the gift of caldo, or broth, as the older Juarez woke from the dead.
There is no magic cure for a hangover, experts know: It’s really just a matter of time, and water, which might explain why every culture has a hangover soup. What is soup but sustenance suspended in water?
During my salad days in Atlanta, it was soup that sustained me (and my friends) after a night of excess, a bowl of pho from the city’s abundant Vietnamese restaurants. In the intervening years, that post-indulgence ritual matured as I grew into someone who keeps a refrigerator stocked with garlic, ginger and ripe kimchi, and a freezer full of stock rich with the fat and flavor of whole chickens.
My hangover kimchi soup will remind you of pho, with echoes of tom yum soup and kimchi guk, all healing and hydrating in their brothy brightness, but it is abundantly itself, a panacea of bright, savory, salty flavors.
The amount of spice you add is up to you, but know that a little red chile lends immeasurable flavor in addition to some heat. Gochugaru works here, but if you’re feeling something else, don’t be afraid to mix and match chile powders. If your ginger root is especially young and tender, consider peeling, then cutting it into fine matchsticks for an even deeper, punchier warmth. White beans offer protein in this dish, which becomes even heartier with white rice or noodles. (You can also sop it up with a slice of cornbread.)
Reheat it throughout the week, adding more broth and various crisper-drawer vegetables you need to use up, like cabbage, kale, arugula, watercress and bean sprouts. Whether you’re hung over, sick with a cold or just plain hungry, this humble, hardworking soup will rouse you from the dead — or even just lift you up when you’re down.
Recipe: Hangover Kimchi Soup
Garlicky, gingery and full of bright flavors, this panacea will heal you from within. The amount of spice is up to you, but know that a little red chile lends immeasurable flavor in addition to heat. If your ginger root is especially young and tender, consider peeling then cutting it into fine 1-inch matchsticks to eat in the soup for an even deeper, punchier warmth. White beans offer protein in this brothy meal, which becomes even heartier with the addition of white rice or noodles. (You can also sop it up with a slice of cornbread.) Reheat this nourishing soup throughout the week, adding more broth and various crisper-drawer vegetables you need to use up, like cabbage, kale, arugula, watercress and bean sprouts. Quick-cooking proteins like shrimp and tofu taste great in place of the beans, too.
By Eric Kim
Yield: 4 servings
Total time: 40 minutes
Ingredients:
1 packed cup finely chopped kimchi (8 ounces; see Tip), plus any accumulated juices
1 quart chicken stock, preferably homemade
4 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 (2-inch) piece ginger, sliced
1 tablespoon gochugaru (see Tip), plus more to taste
1 tablespoon fish sauce, plus more to taste
1 tablespoon doenjang or miso (see Tip)
Salt
1 (15.5-ounce) can large white beans, such as butter, cannellini or great Northern, rinsed and drained
1 small yellow onion, halved, peeled and thinly sliced
1 loosely packed cup fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems
Preparation:
1. To a medium pot, add the kimchi, stock, garlic, ginger, gochugaru, fish sauce and doenjang. Set over high heat until boiling. Partially cover, reduce the heat to medium-low and gently boil, stirring occasionally, until the broth is aromatic, 8 to 10 minutes.
2. Stir in the beans and onion and continue simmering until warmed through, about 5 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings, if needed, with salt, gochugaru and fish sauce. Before serving, discard the ginger if you don’t want to eat it and stir in the cilantro.
Tips:
Kimchi is sold in many ways and at varying stages of ripeness. For this dish, you want very ripe, well-fermented kimchi for the brightest flavor. Less fermented kimchi will taste like fresh cabbage, whereas well-fermented kimchi will taste sharp and pickled, with small bubbles signaling fermentation. To ferment less ripened kimchi from the store, leave it on the counter in its covered jar at room temperature until it starts to effervesce and smell funky, overnight or up to 48 hours. Return to the refrigerator before using.
Gochugaru, a flavorful Korean red-pepper powder, ranges from a fine dust to tiny coarse flakes. Try to buy the coarse variety, for deeper, sweeter flavor. You can find gochugaru at Korean and other Asian supermarkets and at many grocery stores, as well as online.
Buy doenjang, often labeled “soybean paste,” in any Korean or Asian supermarket and online. Funkily pungent and packed with savoriness, doenjang is a magical flavor booster that has likely seasoned much of the banchan, or small dishes, that constellate the table at your favorite Korean restaurant. Doenjang is often compared to Japanese miso but tastes stronger.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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Originally Published: May 8, 2025 at 10:47 AM MDT
